Eight images that amaze you

Three years ago, a blogger tagged me with a meme, asking for eight images that amazed me, or was it eight amazing images? I made a post that included this image of a reader, one I used to have on a postcard, and which now serves as my avatar for Disqus comments.

I should do that exercise again, but with eight different images. Any one else up for it?

Remembering Malcom X on the anniversary of his death

Murdered 45 years ago, Feb 21, 1965. So I don't remember him, because I was 8 and we were living in Japan (in the Army during the Viet Nam war) and I didn't know anything about him until much, much later. I think I connected to the way reading saved his life, gave him a new purpose:

"I certainly wasn't seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me, asking questions. One was, "What's your alma mater?" I told him, "Books.""

We have recordings and transcripts of his speeches, interviews and talks, but he himself did not write his life story. How we understand his words and their meanings today is inseparable from the debates in which he was involved, the polemics of segregation and international anti-colonial struggles in the early sixties.
Here's a good example. Observe how he speaks, with incredible civility, in response to questions that seem either ignorant or motivated by the desire to cast him in a certain light. It's actually a fascinating conversation because he has the opportunity to lay out his thinking without being shouted at.You can see the entire interview here with NBC reporters on a Chicago TV show where he has been invited to talk about black nationalism. This is an excerpt:

Here's another recording in the context of a debate. Note how he uses Shakespeare's words in Oxford to articulate the consciousness of being oppressed.

His analysis was not just of racism in the U.S.: he understood the anticolonial struggle. "There's a world-wide revolution going on."

After his journey to Mecca he parted ways with the Nation of Islam, and his views shifted. He was a leader whose views were evolving. Who really was responsible for his death? I don't think we know, any more than we know who really killed JFK, or Bobby Kennedy or Martin Luther King, Jr.

Alex Haley published the book The Autobiography of Malcolm X the year he was killed; it was based on their conversations, and labeled "as told to." I find this teacher's guide to give a thoughtful approach to reading the book with young people:
A Teacher's Guide to The Autobiography of Malcolm X.

Request: Do you have a good crock pot recipe to share?

I just got my very first crockpot! I come from a non-crockpot family, and have never used one before, yet I am surrounded by Midwestern crockpot fanatics. The other day I got one at Target, and I am in love! Why did it take me so long to try this out? After all, I love my rice cooker, my toaster oven, and my Coleman grill. Maybe it's because I have such strong memories of slow cooking in a Dutch oven or stockpot from home and in my own experience that it didn't seem right to do it another way.

The two dishes I have prepared so far are:
black beans: soaked the dry beans overnight, then cooked them with carrots, onion, garlic, herbs, ham hock, water.
garbanzos: Ditto.

Notice a trend here? both times, the results were delicious, but I wanted to try something different, and I am all out of ham hocks, so right now I am cooking a pork roast I rubbed with garlic, herbs, salt and pepper, to which I added some tomato paste, a little water, carrots, half a bottle of dark beer and some tangy Asian condiment I had lying around in the fridge. It smells delicious and looks good, but I was wondering if you, oh gentle readers, would be so kind as to share a crock pot idea or favorite in the comments? Please?

Yes, I know there are a gazillion web sites out there with crock pot recipes, including this intriguing blog by Stephanie O'Dea with a 365-day challenge to use the crockpot every day (and then write the book Make It Fast, Cook it Slow) but I don't want just ANY recipes, I want those that have pleased you!